The Quest for Postcolonial Utopia is a critical introduction to utopian and dystopian fiction written in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa, and India. It outlines the development of utopian writing over the last thirty years and analyzes the relationship between postcolonial and utopian issues foregrounded in these works. Based on a comparative approach that takes into account the different traditions the texts are derived from, this book examines the function of utopian alternatives and dystopian anxieties in the writings of a wide range of well-known authors such as Janet Frame, David Ireland, J M Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Peter Carey, Rodney Hall, Buchi Emecheta, Margaret Atwood, Glenda Adams, John Cranna, Suniti Namjoshi, Mike Nicol, Ben Okri, Gerald Murnane, and Timothy Findley.

Postcolonial Studies is more often found looking back at the past, but in this brand new book, Bill Ashcroft looks to the future and the irrepressible demands of utopia. The concept of utopia – whether playful satire or a serious proposal for an ideal community – is examined in relation to the postcolonial and the communities with which it engages. Studying a very broad range of literature, poetry and art, with chapters focussing on specific regions – Africa, India, Chicano, Caribbean and Pacific – this book is written in a clear and engaging prose which make it accessible to undergraduates as well as academics. This important book speaks to the past and future of postcolonial scholarship.

This study of Janet Frame's fiction addresses with unusual directness the Utopian momentum that underpins her concern with fundamental social issues, traditionally highlighted in existing criticism of her work. The idea behind this book is that Frame's critique of society, while it is offered for its own sake on one level, should not lead us to neglect the author's more speculative interest in an alternative conception of the human person. Her engagement in a species of experimental portraiture proves elusive, though, owing to an indirectness of approach that usually takes the form of thematic circumscription, rather than explicit representation. For example, the figure of the mute child, recurrent in her work, may well testify to a concern with the plight of the mentally ill; but on another level it also points to an envelope of intractable experience which it is the artist’s task to penetrate and explain. Such aspiration is inseparable from the search for a new medium of expression, felt to be necessary if one is to meet the challenge of apprehending the scope of pioneering knowledge. This close reading of the novels reveals that the alternative dimension of experience to be found in Frame’s novels is characterized by an intact capacity for remembering, or for imaginatively re-creating, eclipsed aspects of the present. Frame's view of Utopia thus turns out to be manifold: it is existential and ontological, linguistic and epistemological, but also historical and political. An unravelling of these intertwined strains then serves to clarify the complex question of Frame's post-colonial sensibility, which cannot be said to rely on a sense of rigid identity, whether national or otherwise.

Postcolonial Studies is more often found looking back at the past, but in this brand new book, Bill Ashcroft looks to the future and the irrepressible demands of utopia. The concept of utopia – whether playful satire or a serious proposal for an ideal community – is examined in relation to the postcolonial and the communities with which it engages. Studying a very broad range of literature, poetry and art, with chapters focussing on specific regions – Africa, India, Chicano, Caribbean and Pacific – this book is written in a clear and engaging prose which make it accessible to undergraduates as well as academics. This important book speaks to the past and future of postcolonial scholarship.

This study considers the recent surge of science fiction narratives from the postcolonial Third World as a utopian response to the spatial, political, and representational dilemmas that attend globalization.

The Utopia Reader compiles primary texts from a variety of authors and movements in the history of theorizing utopias. Utopianism is defined as the various ways of imagining, creating, or analyzing the ways and means of creating an ideal or alternative society. Prominent writers and scholars across history have long explored how or why to envision different ways of life. The volume includes texts from classical Greek literature, the Old Testament, and Plato’s Republic, to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and beyond. By balancing well-known and obscure examples, the text provides a comprehensive and definitive collection of the various ways Utopias have been conceived throughout history and how Utopian ideals have served as criticisms of existing sociocultural conditions. This new edition includes many historically well-known works, little known but influential texts, and contemporary writings, providing an even more expansive coverage of the varieties of approaches and responses to the concept of utopia in the past, present, and even the future. In particular, the volume now includes feminist writings and work by authors of color, and contends with current concerns, such as the exploration of the ecological ideals of Utopia. Furthermore, Claeys and Sargent highlight twenty-first century trends and popular narrative explorations of Utopias through the genres of young adult dystopias, survivalist dystopias, and non-print utopias. Covering a range of original theories of utopianism and revealing the nuances and concerns of writers across history as they attempt to envision different, ideal societies, The Utopia Reader is an essential resource for anyone who envisions a better future.

Since the publication of Thomas More's genre-defining work Utopia in 1516, the field of utopian literature has evolved into an ever-expanding domain. This Companion presents an extensive historical survey of the development of utopianism, from the publication of Utopia to today's dark and despairing tendency towards dystopian pessimism, epitomised by works such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Chapters address the difficult definition of the concept of utopia, and consider its relation to science fiction and other literary genres. The volume takes an innovative approach to the major themes predominating within the utopian and dystopian literary tradition, including feminism, romance and ecology, and explores in detail the vexed question of the purportedly 'western' nature of the concept of utopia. The reader is provided with a balanced overview of the evolution and current state of a long-standing, rich tradition of historical, political and literary scholarship.